Berin Szóka Profile picture
🇺🇸🇩🇪🇫🇷🇪🇺 tech lawyer @TechFreedom, wanderer. “To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man” 🏳️‍🌈📚🗽

May 14, 2021, 8 tweets

1/ There's nothing "conservative" (or constitutional) about the MAGA Fairness Doctrine for the Internet

They're recycling 1960s left's “media access theory”

Me in the WSJ: wsj.com/articles/sen-j…

2/ The First Amendment doesn't give you a right to speak on someone else's property. It actually guarantees *their* right to tell you to take a hike, no matter now "unfair" that might be

Because the 1A is a shield against government meddling in media, not a sword

3/ No, we cant just extend "net neutrality" to social media, because social media have always offered an inherently edited service

4/ Justice Thomas thinks websites can be compelled to be "neutral conduits"

But they're not like the telephone network. They're essentially like newspapers, as @CorbinKBarthold and I have explained:
lawfareblog.com/justice-thomas…

5/ The WSJ has published a lot of MAGA confusion about the First Amendment recently. @AriCohn and I debunk that here:
lawfareblog.com/wall-street-jo…

6/ MAGA arguments for forcing websites to carry their speech are just the bizarro right-wing version of what Prof. Jerome Barron argued in the 1967 law review article that gave birth to the far left's "media access theory"

7/ Conservatives spent decades fighting the idea that the First Amendment gave anyone a right to speak on someone else's private property

Now, as on so many fronts, the Trumpist right has completely switched sides

8/ The Supreme Court firmly rejected media access theory in Miami Herald (1974): even newspapers with local monopolies have a First Amendment right to refuse to carry the speech of others

Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.

A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.

Keep scrolling